A Review of Flash and JavaScript Online Web Portfolios
With so many cool ways for photographers, graphic and web designers, artists, retailers and many more to put their portfolio online and to show off their work these days it seems criminal not to use something more flashy to help separate your business, services and other offerings from the pack.
Here, we provide a quick round up (not extensive reivew or how-to) of some of the available, easy-to-use / configure options open to people who wish to publish examples of their work online. The items on review include: Flipping Book & Page Flipper, PhotoFlow, SimpleViewer, CSS LightBox Effect, and SlideShow Pro.
Flash Portfolios - What's On Offer?
Flipping Book and Page Flipper
Flipping Book and Page Flipper are just 2 of the multitude of available portfolio flash products that provide portfolio functionality as if it were actually a book or magazine.
As a standalone flash widget, either of these two portfolio tools can easily be loaded into an HTML page, and with a simple XML-based configuration file in support, you can easily define how the flash movie operates. For those flash afficionados amongst you the Flipping Book tool can be purchased as a flash component and more inventive and creative versions of the flipping page style portfolio can be made with flash movies loaded into pages for even greater interactivity.
All in all, with the best available content, a good looking portfolio can be up and running within a couple of hours. I personally love the idea of using these page flipping flash movies to display things like corporate brochures, photography and even as previews for books, rather than using something like flash paper, or plain point-and-click photo gallery options.
Page Flipper is available from FlashLoaded.com for the princely sum of $34.95, while Flipping Book is available for as low as $25.
PhotoFlow
PhotoFlow is another FlashLoaded flash component. It behaves in the same way that CoverFlow does for iTunes. That is to say that the site visitor is presented with a stack of standing photos that can then be navigated through, either by scrolling through them or by clicking on each new photo - left or right - in turn. In true web 2.0 style PhotoFlow includes automated photo reflections.
PhotoFlow can also be set up as an automated slideshow to take a web site visitor through your portfolio as quickly and as swiftly as possible, the kind of thing that would be perfect for a home page quick preview of your portfolio. As with Page Flipper, PhotoFlow is configured using a simple XML-based configuration file.
PhotoFlow is available from FlashLoaded.com for as little as $59.95.
SimpleViewer
SimpleViewer is a FREE flash-based portfolio widget that acts more like a traditional portfolio with a menu of smaller icon images that can be clicked on to reveal text and a larger version of the selected image. As with the Flipping Book and PhotoFlow examples the SimpleViewer is controlled via an easy to modify XML configuration file that can be altered in any text editor.
Aside from the obvious cost saving, what SimpleViewer offers that options like PhotoFlow and Flipping Book do not is that you can quickly and easily browse through a larger portfolio. The small icons load quickly and effortlessly and the site visitor can browse through pictures much more quickly and maybe more readily see something that catches their eye and helps to clinch a deal with a potential customer.
SlideShow Pro + SlideShow Pro Director
Leading seemlessly on from SimpleViewer is SlideShow Pro for Flash and for Adobe Lightroom, a portfolio product that describes itself as "the complete photo and video slideshow publishing solution." Whether it lives up to this expectation or not is another story, but it certainly ticks all the boxes at $29 USD it does a great job.
A real boon for SlideShow Pro is in fact SlideShow Pro Director, though at $475 USD convenience and flexibility come with a hefty price tag. That being said, if you have a large portfolio and want to be able to add your own functionality to SlideShow Pro, then it's definitely worth consideration.
Overall SlideShow Pro is a pretty complex and overladen option for most, but if quality, quantity and downright snazziness to show off your photo and video portfolio is what you need then this is perfect for you. It is the directors cut and the premium professional option for those trying to eek out a good trade in their line of business.
CSS Lightbox Effect
LightBox is a Javascript & CSS effect that allows a site visitor to click on a preview icon of an image online and for an enlarged image to appear with the background of the web page obscured by an opaque, translucent grey film. This isn't probably quite as simple as using the flash options, as it requires from HTML know-how, but it is relatively simple to implement and to understand, even for a tech novice following instructions.
There are a plethora of available CSS, XHTML, JavaScript products available for FREE and you should be able to find one that renders properly in an array of the most popular browsers.
Conclusion: Does it Print To Book or Do CD-ROM?
The great thing about any of these options is that they can easily be published to your own website and domain online, but at the same time can be burned to a CD or DVD and apresented to potential clients as a portable portfolio in their web browser pulling the files directly from the source. This makes an excellent device for photographers to send their work to magazines, galleries or potential clients, and for web designers to send examples of their work to people who for whatever reason are unable to get online.
Ranging from the free to the expensive, using any of the available options, flipping book, simpleviewer, photoflow, slideshow pro, or lightbox effect you can't but help to impress people looking over your portfolio, and show them that you are uptodate with the latest in availabel technology for portfolio display.
That being said, if youa re using these options for your web site, you must ensure that they do not comprise 100% of your site, for search engine optisation reasons, and that you add plenty of text based detail about yourself.